Electrical control systems, such as motor control center (MCC) units include individual control components, such as starters, circuit breakers, etc. Such MCC units, or the like, are typically provided with the control components pre-wired. Pre-wiring is facilitated by creating a wire harness with a plurality of individual wires pre-cut, terminated, bent, positioned, and held together with wire ties. The wire harness can then be positioned in the MCC unit and the wires terminated as necessary. This saves time in assembling the MCC unit, increasing productivity.
Challenges in conventional wire harness systems and methods include expensive labor costs and low productivity. Different MCC units have different wire harnesses. It may take an operator a long time to determine the appropriate way to route the wire. Typically, the operator is not provided any guidance to transfer the schematic drawing to harness routing. A skilled worker is required in order to digest the schematic and build the wire harness, which increases labor costs.
Conventional wire harnesses may not be precise. Although a standard harness board may be used to help the operator, one harness board cannot cover all the different wire harnesses of all the MCC units. Additional labor is required at wiring stage to re-cut and re-strip an imprecise harness. The above can result in increasing the likelihood of mistakes and wiring the wrong connection.
Current MCC units can be dynamically configured according to the units' functionality. While the MCC unit may contain only about 10 components, the combination of different components can create hundreds of layouts. It is difficult to make a precise harness for different layouts by using a single harness board template.
Typically, about half of the manufactured MCC units utilize common design so that large quantities of harnesses are required. In these instances, stock harness boards may be provided. The other half of the MCC units are in smaller quantities and may not justify assembling and storing an individual harness board. The design of a specific harness board for small quantity MCC units is not economical and is time consuming. Also, it is desirable to use a just-in-time system to make precise harnesses by operators without advance harness board design.
The present invention is directed to solving one or more of the problems discussed above.